Qualcomm

If you're a smartphone company that doesn't make its own mobile processors, you're at a disadvantage. Xiaomi isn't at the scale to follow Apple and Samsung and dive into quite silicon yet - though the increasingly popular manufacturer is growing rapidly - but that doesn't mean the latest Mi Note Pro doesn't have a performance edge over Snapdragon 810-powered rivals like the HTC One M9. Usually they're rarer than hen's teeth in North America, so you can consider me curious when I had the opportunity to do some benchmarking with the fettled phone.

Cue inappropriate jokes. MediaTek is really putting the heat on Qualcomm, more so after seeing a chink in its armor courtesy of Samsung. Just recently it tried selling the idea of a three-tier deca-core mobile processor even while Qualcomm has just gotten started with 8 cores. Now with its own "Pump Express Plus", it is taking aim at Qualcomm's fast charging technology, Quick Charge 2.0, that is slowly snaking its way into the latest flagships and quickly becoming a much wanted feature in smartphones.

Wireless speakers have traditionally fallen into one of two camps, either Bluetooth or WiFi, but Qualcomm is aiming to harmonize the two. The newest version of Qualcomm AllPlay now supports Bluetooth to WiFi re-streaming, allowing music piped from a smartphone or tablet to a Bluetooth speaker to them be funneled to further WiFi-connected speakers, with all zones fully synchronized.

Qualcomm has ambitions for the Internet of Things beyond just wiring up your fridge to the web, launching a set of chipsets that will not only provide connectivity but app support to appliances. The two new embeddable boards target everything from coffee pots and rice cookers through toasters, fridges, and washer-dryers, not to mention integrating the IoT - or the "Internet of Everything" as Qualcomm prefers to describe it - with home hubs and routers. Meanwhile, there are moves to smooth the IoT setup experience, too.

HTC reveals the HTC J Butterfly, a large-screened smartphone destined for carriers inside Japan. This smartphone works with many of the same specifications at the HTC One M9, but here works with a 5.2-inch WQHD display (that's 1440 x 2560), also known as 2K. This device also has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor under the hood alongside 3GB of RAM, more than enough to get you through your biggest and best apps and games. In Japan, of course. Not the United States as such.

LG has confirmed that the G4 smartphone does, in fact, support Qualcomm's rapid charging system for speedier top-ups, despite initially claiming the feature was absent. Quick Charge 2.0 is one of the more appreciated abilities of recent Snapdragon chipsets, capable of potentially taking a device from dead to more than halfway charged in under thirty minutes, so we were understandably confused when LG initially told us it would be missing from the flagship G4.

After months of somewhat keeping silent, while letting its partners do the talking, Qualcomm is finally speaking out on the issues that have plagued what would have been its star chip for 2015, the Snapdragon 810. Naturally, it's calling the rumors of the chip overheating as hogwash and based on incomplete data. Of course, it's pointing the finger at "someone" who has been spreading this rumor to its advantage, without specifically mentioning the one company that stands to profit from the Snapdragon 810's failure: Samsung.

Qualcomm, one of the biggest chip makers in the mobile industry, is facing quite some challenges on multiple fronts. It practically admitted taking a hit from Samsung's decision not to go with its chips for the highly popular Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge flagships. It also explicitly mentioned incurring no small amount of loss in settling an antitrust case in China. But despite the latter, Qualcomm is even more intent in wooing the large market, this time by establishing ties with Chinese smartphone makers to help them launch their products abroad.

In the tech industry, the term "frenemies" isn't entirely new. Companies that lambast each other in public usually have quieter, friendly deals in some corners. Despite the almost toxic rivalry between Apple and Samsung, the Korean manufacturer has been, at several points in time, a supplier of components for Cupertino's devices. And now, despite the perceived tension between Qualcomm and Samsung, the San Diego, California chip maker is now rumored to be looking at Samsung's foundries for making its next high-end chip, the Snapdragon 820.

Samsung and Qualcomm might have had a falling out over the chips that would have been used for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, but the two might have to become frenemies soon if they are to see victory in the patent challenge NVIDIA has brought to their doorsteps. Claiming the first kill, NVIDIA proudly announced on its blog that presiding Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender has ruled in favor of NVIDIA's construction of the patent claims, which very well sets the tone for the upcoming trial, or even call for a settlement.